Ever since I purchased the AirPods (1st Generation), they demonstrate extremely poor quality while activating the AirPod mic, whilst they are connected to a Mac. When activating the mic to record audio, it seems that both the recording quality AND audio playback quality severely drops to a substandard level (Mono 8.0 kHz).

For example, if I invoke Siri on the Mac, whatever is being said and recorded by me, AND the Siri/Mac/AirPod audio response will be in poor quality. After the recording is done, audio playback quality usually goes back to normal1. Any mic audio recorded to a file will however be in the poor quality; which is why I interpret the issue to affect both recording and playback qualities.

The issue appears to be identical to the one discussed in this Apple Support Forum thread. The thread offers possible explanations but no definitive solution or suggested course of action.

I have this issue with several Macs of various recent models. I don't have this problem when using the AirPods with an iPhone. I have tried resetting the Mac Bluetooth interface, tried resetting the AirPods, and so forth.

1It has happened that the Mac got permanently stuck in low quality until system reboot, or even whenever the AirPods were connected afterwards. I had to attempt AirPod unpair/re-pair, and even a charging case reset to fix the latter situation.

Please create a new admin user on your Mac and try to recreate the issue with this account. Is the audio quality distorted in the same way? BTW, I have experienced the same issue in the past.
– oa-May 16 '17 at 17:54

Based off of what you've tried & @oa experience with the same issue, I would guess that this is a bug in OS X. Testing in a new admin account is a great move but if it doesn't work I think the best thing you can do is to continue to update your software.
– little tiny manMay 17 '17 at 15:59

@oa- Thanks for the suggestion – I have the same issue on my admin account. I would agree that this seems to be firmware or OS-related, unless my AirPods or Mac Bluetooth chip are defective. I don't think the latter is likely however.
– WinterflagsMay 17 '17 at 21:33

If applicable, please check your AirPods firmware using a connected iPhone: Settings > General > About > AirPods. Note that this entry one of the last entries and that your AirPods must be connected to your iPhone. What version is displayed?
– oa-May 18 '17 at 6:58

I used to have the problem described here, but now can no longer reproduce it. (To try to reproduce, I'm playing a song via iTunes, then triggering Siri from AirPods, asking something via Siri, then resuming the song.) Audio quality stays good now. Creating an audio recording via QuickTime Player also results in a high-quality recording. I wonder if Apple fixed this? macOS Sierra 10.12.6 + AirPods 3.7.2. I may need different steps to reproduce? (I was planning to give areilly.com/2017/07/29/… a try, but now don't need to.)
– Wim LeersDec 29 '17 at 23:51

6 Answers
6

OP here – I'd just like to add to the answer below, that I've been in contact with Apple Support.

Explanation

Apple claims that the poor Mono 8kHz quality which affects recording and indeed simultaneously playback on Mac when the AirPod microphones are activated, is because the SCO codec then gets employed over the entire Mac audio system. This is supposedly "expected behaviour" when trying to use the AirPods and other Bluetooth headsets together with a computer, according to Apple.

The AAC codec is normally used when just listening to playback on the AirPods. It's just very unfortunate that SCO – low-quality as it may be – upon AirPod microphone activation is not only limited to doing recording, but also displaces AAC and audio playback.

Apple Support claims that Apple is looking at this issue, and that improvements might be coming in future firmware updates, but I did not interpret that as a promise to be honest. But for the time being, I'd say that the benefits of making calls and so forth with AirPods on Macs are quite limited.

Current best practice

Current best practice is to use the Internal Microphone for Recording, and the AirPods for playback when conducting calls. Input and Output devices can be selected in System Settings > Sound or by ⌥-clicking the Volume icon in the macOS Menu Bar, and selecting devices there.

Many of our readers are letting us know that their AirPods are
experiencing a lot of challenges while using them with macOS. In
particular, when the mic is used, the AirPods’ audio is very low
fidelity and sound quality. Some iFolks claim that they cannot even
understand the other person when video-chatting with apps like
FaceTime, Hangouts, and Skype. And your callers also report that your
voice sounds muddy or that they barely hear you at all.

Is there a fix?

Other than the workaround to use your internal mic, no. My advice is to return the unit to Apple. There may be a fix in a future update to macOS or the AirPod firmware, but only Apple knows when they will issue an update. Given that Apple "silently" released the last update, don't expect too much fanfare with the next one.

Personally, I would have returned them and/or opened a support case with Apple as they are the best ones to solve this issue.

This is not an issue with your "bluetooth chip" as per the comments. This would be easy to diagnose - test you MBP with other BT headsets. If the problem goes away, it's the AirPods.

As the answer already states, it's because the AirPods change to the SCO codec. The bad news is, there is no way to permanently change this in macOS High Sierra¹ - there was a way to fix it in macOS Sierra, so if anyone reads this and hasn't yet updated, try this:

Use Apple's developer tool Bluetooth Explorer. Then you can use Audio Options (under Tools in the menu bar) to force them to use the alternative codec aptX.

This problem frustrates me to no end. Recently I noticed that when I start a Vagrant/VirtualBox VM (vagrant up), and it prompts me for administrator access (one time I remember it asked for access to the microphone, and I was a bit confused), the audio drops to the low bitrate connection.

I always have my mic set to an external USB mic, and speakers set to AirPods, so it doesn't seem (in my case) to be related to the mic input being set to the AirPods.

However, knowing that I can more easily see what's happening with the Audio MIDI Setup app, I opened it up, and sat there messing with some toggles a bunch of times, until I came up with the following process which set the audio back to the 32-bit 2 channel mode reliably without a full reboot!

Have some audio playing (e.g. iTunes)

Open Audio MIDI Setup

Select your Airpods in the list of devices (the one with 1 out or 2 outs)

Toggle the 'Format' menu from "1 ch 16-bit..." to "2 ch 32-bit..."

Note that this will blip the audio for a few ms, but it will switch back

Keep Audio MIDI Setup open

Disconnect your AirPods to your Mac using the Bluetooth menu

Re-connect your AirPods to your Mac using the Bluetooth menu

Wait for some playing audio to return to your AirPods—it will still be tinny and yucky sounding.

Quit Audio MIDI Setup.

This has worked two times for me; other times I tried restarting... just putting this out there in case it works for someone else!

I just created a little menu bar app that forces the default input to be the built-in microphone of the mac if exists, if not you can choose your desired default input source. No more sound quality drops and it also increases the battery life. It is free and open source: